Exercise is widely accepted as an important element in maintaining health and wellness. Many exercise machines exist to provide users with a variety of movements, such as treadmills, stationary cycles, arm ergometers, weight lifting machines, and the like. Most exercise machines are used in ways that create complex movements and loading to the machines. For this reason, exercise machines are typically mounted on stable structural bases that stand on the floor and are immobile. In addition, most exercise machines are designed for exercise in a standing or seated position and generally remain in a room or gym that a user must go to for exercise.
Prolonged bed rest and immobilization are used in the medical treatment of several conditions in an effort to allow an exerciser's body to heal from injury or surgery, for example spinal cord injury. However, prolonged bed rest can lead to significant loss of muscle strength, and can negatively affect health in other ways as well as lengthening recovery time after healing. The cardiovascular and respiratory systems are also affected by long periods of bed rest. Exercise is therefore an important activity to alleviate the long term negative health effects of prolonged bed rest. However, most exercise machines are not suitable for use by a person in a supine position.
As an example, many arm ergometers (also known as UBE or upper body ergometers) are currently available on the market, but none are able to be used by a person lying in a supine position in a hospital bed. A previous study described a hand ergometer for bedridden patients (Shteingardt, et al, Meditsinskaya Tekhnika, No. 5, pp. 41-42, 1974) which had a mounting fixture for the foot end of a bed. The patient performs a rowing motion to lift a weight on the fixture, while lying supine in bed. Such an exercise is not appropriate for patients with spinal cord injury or other patients bedridden for extended periods of time, due to shear on the tissues of the back, buttocks and legs, placing patients at greater risk of developing pressure ulcers. The mounting fixture would also be difficult to mount on different types of hospital beds due to variation in hospital bed sizes and foot end structures, and demounting and remounting was required to move the device from patient to patient.
There are some commercially available devices which allow exercise in a supine position, specifically the Angio made by Lode BV of Groningen, Netherlands, and the RE 990S made by Rodby Innovation AB of Vange, Sweden. Both of these devices are only designed for lower limb pedaling exercise when a user is in a supine position, and are not designed for upper limb exercise while supine in a hospital bed.
Prior exercise machines for use when lying supine in a bed have disadvantages such as instability during exercise because of the mounting or support arrangement, and difficulty in moving the machines from one bed to another.